


In Which Kent Expresses His Feelings With Green Slime

by bookwyrmling



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Howl's Moving Castle Fusion, Gen, Gratuitous Green Slime, some language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 07:52:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9810098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwyrmling/pseuds/bookwyrmling
Summary: Bitty has not only found himself in a body at least 60 years older than he is supposed to be, but also in the employ of a horrible, insufferable wizard by the name of Kent who has even forced an evil fire demon to bend to his will and is likely corrupting the innocent mind of his sweet apprentice, Chowder.  If only Bitty could find a way, with all his snooping to break his curse or the fire demon's contract...and do it without causing the worst temper tantrum Ingary has ever seen.Everyone always said the eldest of three would come to ruin if they attempted to seek their fortune and Bitty's beginning to realize how true that is.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So sometimes you write a quick little AU idea out for fun. And sometimes your friend tells you that you have to write it. Therefore, here’s the infamous slime scene from my Howl’s Moving Castle AU. 
> 
> A few notes for those unfamiliar with the book (because I went by the book, not the movie). Bitty has been cursed by the horrible Witch of the Waste to look like an 80 year old instead of his actual youthful young adult self. In order to resolve the situation, he makes he runs away from home and ends up in the employ of a horrible Wizard named Kent whom he has heard tricks attractive young men and women, lures them in and then eats their hearts and uses them to power his magic. Jack is a fire demon caught in a contract with the sorcerer, Kent, whom promises to help Bitty break his curse so long as Bitty first helps him break his contract with Kent. Jack's power is used to keep a castle with a door that has portals to four different locations going. The four locations are: red-down, Kingsbury (capital city); green-down, moors outside Market Chipping (where Bitty, Lardo and Caitlin are from); blue-down, Porthaven (a sea town and the real home base of the castle); and black-down which only Kent knows about. Chowder is Kent's apprentice. Lardo and Caitlin are Bitty's younger sisters. Lardo was originally to be sent to Annie's bakery to learn how to bake and maybe find a good husband and Caitlin was to be sent to MooMaw's to study magic and get to know important people and become a successful witch all while Bitty stayed home and took over his family's hat shop. But Lardo wanted to learn magic and not get married and Caitlin wanted to fall in love and have ten kids, so they swapped places using a magic spell. The Lardo at Annie's is actually Caitlin in disguise and she and Chowder have something going on. The real Lardo is supposedly pretending to be Caitlin at MooMaw's. When Kent talks about Lardo, however, he is referring to the real Lardo (at MooMaw's), while Bitty thinks he is talking about Caitlin. Oh! Shitty was the Royal Wizard but he went off into the Wastes to fight the Witch and hasn't been heard from since, so is believed dead.
> 
> I think that's all the important stuff that comes up in the story.

Bitty was not in love with cleaning, but when he was given a job—especially one where his room and board was dependent on him doing said job—he did it to the best of his ability. And, loving it or not, cleaning was something Bitty knew how to do.

So maybe he had taken some of his frustrations at his predicament out on cleaning—frustration and anger that should have been directed at the Witch of the Waste, no less.

And maybe it had inconvenienced the castle’s residents a bit.

And maybe he really had overstepped boundaries he should have been respectful of.

Bitty was aware that he had messed up by attempting to sneak into Kent’s mess of a room—especially since he had done as much on pretense in order to secretly look for evidence of the stories he had heard back at the hat shop—and that Kent had every right to kick him out into the cold but, for some odd reason, had not. Chowder claimed it was because of Jack, but that almost made it worse because Bitty knew that Jack had latched onto him only because Bitty had promised to look for a way to break the contract between him and Kent in payment for having his own curse removed after.

He still felt chagrined over the chastening Kent had given him at the end of it all, too. It really went to show how much the wizard could do for himself if he so chose. It showed Bitty how little he was needed here and how dependent he was on Kent’s good will.

And it was not that Kent’s good will was fickle or rare, either.

By the next morning, he was enjoying the breakfast Bitty had made—that Jack had purposefully, if half-heartedly, tried to burn in retribution for how down Bitty had felt after the previous day’s row—while answering Chowder’s questions about a spell he had been given to put together for a seaman’s wife from Porthaven.

After the meal, rather than traipsing off to woo the poor soul who had most recently caught his attention, he locked himself away in his room, tinkering on who knows what nefarious workings. The few times he did come down to check on Chowder’s progress, Bitty made sure to stay out of his way, baking three pies that day before forcing himself to stop so as to not overwork Jack who was complaining about rain coming down the chimney and making it harder to burn. Two of the pies went to their neighbors in Porthaven, who cried at the “old wizard’s” gift and offered fish and vegetables and butter he could use in more pies in return. The third was for the three of them and would work as a solid dessert on top of the fresh dinner ingredients he had just received.

By the time Bitty had the vegetables roasting and was working on filleting the fish, he was in a good enough mood to even hum along to Jack’s funny little saucepan song. He stirred the vegetables and herbs, tossed one to Jack, and did not at all hear Kent enter the main room.

“Happy in your work?”

Bitty heard the sarcasm in the words and raised his nose at them rather than hunching his shoulders. “I could use some more,” he said, his attention on pulling a few missed bones out of the cod fillets he had finished preparing.

Kent stood there, watching him for a moment and Bitty kept his attention occupied on the meal, not the heavy stare behind him, picking up the carefully latticed pie and placing it in the center of the table he had just told Chowder to clear as the meal’s centerpiece.

“Raspberries are about to come in-season,” Kent said suddenly before walking over to give Chowder’s spell a final check.

Bitty took that to mean Kent was no longer angry with him and blinked as he felt at least ten pounds of weight fall off his shoulders. On top of the guilt, Bitty had been terrified that morning, despite not finding evidence (probably all kept in Kent’s bedroom, no less) that the man really did chop up pretty young girls and handsome young men for his spells.

Over dinner, it became quite clear that Kent had not yet wooed the girl he was after. Bitty listened to Chowder asking rather obvious questions about it and Kent slithering neatly out of answering any of them. “He’s definitely a snake,” Bitty muttered to a pain as he scrubbed dishes after, “Can’t face his own wickedness.”

Bitty watched Kent being restlessly busy in order to hide his discontent. That was something Bitty understood rather well.

At the bench, Kent worked a good deal harder and faster than Chowder, putting spells together in an expert but slapdash way. From the look on Chowder’s face, most of the spells were both unusual and hard to do. But Kent would leave a spell midway and dash up to his room -- to check on whatever sinister project he had been secretly working on through the morning -- only to race right back out to the yard to tinker on some grand project out there.

Bitty cracked open the door and was awed to see the elegant wizard kneeling in the mud with his long sleeves tied together behind his neck to keep them out of the way while he carefully heaved a tangle of greasy metal into a special framework of some kind.

That spell was for the King. That morning, an overdressed and scented messenger arrived with a letter and a harrowingly long speech in which he wondered if Kent could possibly spare time—no doubt valuably employed in other ways, to bend his powerful and ingenious mind to a small problem experienced by His Royal Majesty—to whit, how an army might get its heavy wagons through deep snow and over slippery ice.

Kent was wonderfully polite and equally long-winded in reply.

He said no.

But the messenger spoke for a further half-hour, at the end of which he and Kent bowed to one another and Kent agreed to do the spell.

“Damn that Shitty, getting himself lost in the Waste,” he groaned and rubbed at his neck once the messenger had gone. “The King seems to think I’ll do instead.”

“You’re just so creative with your spells and solutions,” Chowder praised, “It’s no surprise he’d turn to you with his Royal Wizard gone.”

“I’m too nice is what it is,” Kent complained, “I should have overcharged him more.”

Kent was equally nice with customers from Porthaven, but, as Chowder anxiously -- but with understanding and approval of Kent’s sympathy -- pointed out, the trouble was that Kent did not charge these people enough. This was all said the next day after Kent had listened for an hour to the reasons why a seaman’s wife could not pay him a penny yet and then promised a seacaptain a windspell for almost nothing.

Kent eluded Bitty and Chowder’s concerned statements by giving Chowder a lesson.

“I know I’m slapdash, but there’s no need for you to copy me,” Kent ground out as he jabbed his finger at the parchment Chowder was supposed to be studying, “You could end up hurt or hurting other people. Always read a spell all the way through and carefully, first. The shape of it should tell you all of the basics you need to know: whether it’s self-fulfilling or self-discovering, if it’s incantation or mixed action and speech. When you’ve decided that, go through again and decide which bits mean what they say and which bits are meant as a puzzle.”

Chowder’s brows furrowed in focus and he nodded his head at each instruction he was given.

“You’re hitting the more powerful ones now,” Kent continued, “You’ll find every spell of power has at least one deliberate mistake or mystery in it to prevent accidents. You have to spot those. Now, take this spell…”

Listening to Chowder’s halting replies to Kent’s questions, and watching Kent scribble remarks on the paper with a strange everlasting quill pen, Bitty realized that he could learn a lot too. It dawned on him that if Caitlin could discover the spell to swap herself and Lardo about at MooMaw’s, then he ought to be able to do the same here and get himself out of his own predicament. The thought of being back in his own body with his own age was more than tempting. Yes, being dull, overlooked Eric Bittle, heir to a hat shop who’d never amount to anything (as the eldest of three was known to do), might not be much of an interesting life, but it was far superior to being stuck in the body of an 80 year-old—even if he did still have all his teeth. Besides, with a bit of luck, there might be no need to rely on Jack.

When Kent was satisfied that Chowder had forgotten all about how much or little he charged people in Porthaven, he took him out into the yard to help with the King’s spell. Bitty creaked to his feet and hobbled to the bench. The spell was clear enough but Kent’s scrawled remarks defeated him. “Did he just stop practicing after two?” he grumbled to the human skull. “Does he use a pen or a poker?” He dug through every pile and scrap of paper on the bench and examined the powders and liquids in their crooked jars. “Alright, Betsy, let’s admit it,” he told the skull, “I snoop. And I have my proper reward. I can find out how to cure fowl pest and treat whooping cough, raise a wind and remove hairs from the face. If Caitlin had found these sorts of spells, she’d still be at MooMaw’s and Lardo stuck at Annie’s.”

Kent, it seemed to Bitty, went and examined every single thing he had touched when he came in from the yard, but it also seemed to be no more than restlessness. He looked like he didn’t quite know what to do with himself and Bitty heard him roving up and down through the night. He only spent an hour in the bathroom the next morning and looked like he was barely containing himself while Chowder put on his best teal suit, ready to go to the Palace in Kingsbury, and the two of them wrapped the bulky spell up in golden paper. The spell must have been surprisingly light for its size. Chowder could carry it on his own easily. Kent turned the door red-down for him and sent him out into the street among the painted houses.

“They’re expecting it,” Kent cheerily waved Chowder off, “You should only have to wait most of the morning. Tell them a child could work it. Show them. And when you come back, I’ll have a spell of power for you to get to work on. So long.”

Kent shut the door and roamed the room again. “My feet itch,” he said suddenly, “I’m going for a walk on the hills. Tell Chowder the spell I promised him is on the bench. And here’s for you to keep busy with.”

Bitty found a basket of raspberries, fresh and perfectly ripe, dropped into his lap from nowhere. Kent, meanwhile, picked up his guitar from its corner, turned the doorknob green-down, and stepped out among the scudding heather above Market Chipping.

“His feet itch…” grumbled Jack. There was a fog down in Porthaven and Jack was low among his logs, moving uneasily this way and that to avoid drips in the chimney. “He’s not stuck in a damp grate.”

“Then you’ll have to give me a hint at least about how to break your contract,” Jack said, shaking out the fruit. “Lord, you’re all perfect, aren’t you?” he asked the fruit after popping one into his mouth.

“I have given you a hint!” Jack fizzed.

“Then you’ll have to give it again. I didn’t catch it,” Bitty said as he set the basket on the table and hobbled to the door.

“If I give you a hint and tell you it’s a hint, it’ll be information and I’m not allowed to give that,” Jack explained. “Where are you going?”

“To do something I didn’t dare do until they were both out,” Bitty said. He twisted the square knob over the door until the black blob pointed downward. Then he opened the door.

There was nothing outside. It was neither black nor grey nor white. It was neither thick nor transparent. It did not move, had no smell, had no feel. When Bitty put a very cautious finger out into it, it was neither hot nor cold. It felt of nothing. It seemed utterly and completely nothing.

“What is this?” he asked Jack.

Jack was as interested as Bitty. His blue face was leaning right out of the grate to see the door and he had completely forgotten about the fog. “I...don’t know,” he muttered, “I only maintain it. All I know is that it’s on the side of the castle that no one can walk around. It feels...quite far away.”

“It feels beyond the moon!” Bitty added. He shut the door, shaking his head, and turned the knob green-down. He hesitated a minute and then started to hobble to the stairs.

“He’s locked it,” said Jack. “He told me to tell you if you tried to snoop again.”

“Oh,” Bitty pouted, staring up the stairs. “What’s he got up there?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Jack, “I don’t know anything about upstairs. I can’t even really see outside the castle. Only enough to see what direction I’m going in. Annoying!”

Bitty, feeling equally frustrated, walked over to the kitchen counters and began working on a crust for the raspberries. Chowder came in quite soon after that.

“The King saw me at once,” he said, “He—”

Chowder looked around the room and his eyes went to the empty corner where the guitar usually stood. “Oh, no!” he cried, “Not the lady friend again! I thought she’d fallen in love with him and it was all over days ago. What’s keeping her?”

Jack sparked wickedly. “You got the signs wrong. Heartless Kent is finding this one tough to conquer. He decided to leave her alone a few days to see if that would help.”

“Oh bother,” said Chowder, “That’s gonna be trouble. And here I was hoping he was almost sensible again.”

Bitty banged the pie dish down on the counter. “Really!” he argued. “How can you both talk like that about such utter wickedness! I guess I can’t blame Jack, since he’s an evil demon. But you, Chowder—!”

“I don’t think I’m evil,” Jack protested.

“But I’m not calm about it!” Chowder’s cry rose at the same time as his eyes went hollow, “If you knew the trouble we’ve had because Kent keeps falling in love like this! We’ve had lawsuits...and suitors with swords...and mothers with rolling pins and fathers and uncles with cudgels…And aunts! Aunts are terrible. They go for you with hat pins.”

“But the worst,” he continued with a shudder, “is when the girl or guy themselves finds out where Kent lives and turns up at the door, crying and miserable. Kent goes out through the back door and Jack and I have to deal with them all!”

“I don’t mind the angry ones as much. They don’t cry on me,” Jack grumbled.

“Now let’s get this straight,” Bitty said, clenching his fists around his own rolling pin. “What does Kent do to those poor girls and boys? I was told he ate their hearts and took their souls away.”

Chowder laughed and fidgeted uncomfortably. “Then you must come from Market Chipping. Kent sent me down there to spread rumors when we first set up the castle. I—er—I said that short of thing. It’s what Aunts usually say. It’s only true figuratively speaking…”

“Kent’s about as fickle as they come,” Jack explained, “He’s only interested until the person falls in love with him. Then he can’t be bothered with them.”

“But he can’t rest until he’s made them love him!” Chowder tacked on with a beleaguered wail, “He’s half useless until he has. I always look forward to the time when the person falls for him. Things get better then.”

“Until they track him down,” Jack reminded and Chowder nodded somberly.

“You’d think he’d have the sense to give them a false name,” Bitty scoffed to hide the fact that he was feeling somewhat foolish.

“Oh, he does!” Chowder said, “He loves giving false names and playing people. He does it even when he’s not chasing guys or girls. Haven’t you seen the signs? He’s Sorcerer Kenny in Porthaven and Wizard Parson in Kingsbury? And, of course, he’s Callous Kent in Market Chipping.”

Bitty had not noticed, which made him feel more foolish still, which only made him angry. “Well, I still think it’s pretty horrible, going around making poor young girls and boys unhappy,” he said. “It’s heartless and pointless.”

“He’s made that way,” said Jack in a heavy tone of voice that drew a confused look from Bitty before he returned to rerolling out his pie crust he had earlier mussed.

Chowder pulled a three-legged stool up to the fire and sat on it while Bitty baked, telling him of Kent’s conquests and some of the trouble that had happened afterward. Bitty muttered at the raspberries, still feeling very foolish. “So you ate hearts, did you? Why do Aunts word things so weird? Probably fancied a taste themselves. How would you feel with a raging Aunt after you, huh?”

As Chowder told him the story of the particular Aunt he had in mind, it occurred to Bitty that it was probably just as well the rumors of Kent had come to Market Chipping in those words. He could imagine a strong-minded one like Lardo otherwise getting very interested in him and ending up very unhappy. Chowder had just suggested lunch as Bitty finished with the top crust, Jack grumbling at the dual work as usual, when Kent flung the door open and came in, more discontent than ever.

“Something to eat?” asked Bitty.

“No,” said Kent. “Hot water in the bathroom, Jack.” He stood moodily in the bathroom door a moment. “Bitty, you haven’t touched the shelf of spells in here, have you?”

Bitty felt more foolish than ever and there was absolutely no way he was going to admit he had gone through all of the packets and jars looking for girls’ fingers or boys’ ears. “I haven’t touched a thing,” he replied virtuously as he went to get the frying pan.

“I hope you didn’t…” Chowder said uneasily as the bathroom door slammed.

Gushing and gurgling came from the bathroom while Bitty fried lunch. “He’s using a lot of hot water,” Jack said from under the pan, “I think he’s tinting his eyes. I hope you left those spells alone. For someone with plain grey eyes, he’s pretty stuck on his looks.”

“Oh hush,” Bitty snapped, “I put everything back just where I found it!” He was so cross that he emptied the pan of eggs and bacon right over Jack. Jack, of course, ate them with great enthusiasm and much flaring and flashing and sizzling. Bitty fried more over the spitting flames, which he and Chowder then ate.

They were clearing away the dishes, Jack running his blue tongue over purple lips, when the bathroom door crashed open and Kent shot out, wailing with despair. “Look at this! Look at it! What has that force of chaos done to my spells?”

Bitty and Chowder whirled around and looked at Kent. He was soaking wet and wrapped in a towel, but, apart from that, neither of them could see that he looked any different.

“If you mean me—” Bitty began, but Kent was quick to interrupt.

“Who else?! Look!” Kent shrieked. He sat down with a thump on the three-legged stool and jabbed at his face with his finger. “Look. Survey. Inspect. My eyes are ruined! They’re no different from common mud!”

Chowder and Bitty bent nervously over Kent’s head. While a bit darker than usual, his eyes barely seemed any different at all. The only difference might have been a slight, very slight, trace of brown, a third color the usual blue and green could shift to and Bitty found it not at all bad. It reminded him a little of the color his own eyes were.

“It’s fine,” he waved off.

“Fine?!” screamed Kent, “Of course you’d say that! You did it on purpose, after all. You had to go and make me miserable too. Look at it! My eyes are brown! I’m going to have to hide until it wears off!” He spread his arms out passionately.

“Despair!” he yelled.

“Anguish! Horror!”

The room turned dim. Huge, cloudy, human-looking shapes grew up in all four corners and advanced on Bitty and Chowder, howling as they came. The howls began as moaning horror and went up to despairing brays before jumping up again to screams of pain and terror. Bitty pressed his hands to his ears, but the screams trampled through louder and louder still, more horrible every second.

Jack shrank hurriedly down in the grate and flickered his way under his lowest log. Chowder grabbed Bitty by the elbow and dragged him to the door. He spun the knob to blue-down, kicked the door open and go them both out into the street in Porthaven as fast as he could.

The noise was almost as horrible out there. Doors were opening all down the road and people ran out with hands pressed tight to their ears.

“Is it okay to leave him alone like this?” Bitty quaked.

“If he thinks it’s your fault, then definitely,” Chowder said.

They hurried through the town, pursued by throbbing screams. Quite a crowd came with them. In spite of the fact that the fog had now become a seeping sea drizzle, everyone made for the harbor and sands where the noise seemed easier to bear out by the open sea. Everyone stood in damp huddles, looking out at the misty white horizon and the dripping ropes on moored ships while the noise became a gigantic, heartbroken sobbing.

Bitty suddenly realized that he was seeing the sea up close for the first time in his life. It was a pity he could not enjoy it more.

The sobs finally died away to vast, miserable sighs and then silence. People began to cautiously head back into town. Some of them came timidly up to Bitty.

“Is something wrong with the poor Sorcerer, Mr. Wizard?”

“He’s a little unhappy today,” Chowder jumped in, “Come on, we should be able to go back now.”

As they went along the stone quayside, several sailors called out anxiously from the moored ships, wanting to know if the noise meant storms or bad luck.

“Not at all,” Bitty called back, “It’s all over now.”

But it was not.

They came back to the Wizard’s house, which was an ordinary crooked little building from the outside that Bitty would not have recognized if Chowder had not been with him. Chowder opened the shabby little door carefully before peeking inside. Kent was still sitting on the stool, lumped over in an attitude of utter despair and covered completely in a thick, green slime.

Horrendous, dramatic, violent quantities of green slime.

It covered Kent completely, draping from his head and shoulders in sticky dollops, heaping on his knees and hands, trickling in glops down his legs and dripping off the stool in sticky strands. It sat in oozing ponds and crawled rivers over most of the floor. Long fingers of it had crept into the heart and it smelled vile.

“Help!” Jack cried in a hoarse whisper. He was down to two desperately flickering small flames. “This crap is going to put me out!”

Bitty held up the hem of his pants and marched as near Kent as he could get—which was not very close at all.

“Stop it!” he yelled, “Stop now! You’re throwing a tantrum like a toddler!”

Kent did not move or answer. His face stared from behind the slime, white and tragic and wide-eyed.

“What do we do?” Chowder whispered in concern from behind Bitty, “Is he dead?”

Chowder was a sweet boy, Bitty thought, but a bit helpless in a crisis.

“Of course he’s not dead,” he shook his head before rolling up his sleeves. “And if it wasn’t for Jack, he could have his fit all day for all I care. Now go open the bathroom door.”

While Chowder worked his way between pools of slime to the bathroom, Bitty threw his apron into the heart to stop more of the goop getting near Jack and snatched up the shovel. He scooped up loads of ash and dumped them into the biggest pools of slime, where it hissed violently. The room filled with steam and smelled even worse than it had before. Once he was out of ash, Bitty shoved his sleeves as far up his arms as he could get them, bent his back to get a good purchase on the Wizard’s slimy knees, and pushed Kent, stool and all, toward the bathroom.

His feet slipped and skidded in the slime, but all of the gunk helped the stool slide easier, too. Chowder came and pulled at Kent’s slime-draped shoulders and, together, they trundled him into the bathroom. There, since Kent still refused to move, they shoved him into the shower stall.

“Hot water, Jack!” Bitty panted in grim determination and disgust, “Very hot.”

It took an hour to wash the slime off Kent. It took Chowder another hour to persuade Kent to get off the stool and into dry clothes while Bitty took stock of the mess made in the main room. The first shelf of his larder, for example, was ruined and once Kent was in dry clothes, he set Chowder to tossing out the flour, sugar and other bagged staples it had held. They turned the knob green down and chucked everything out onto the moors, Bitty mopping the slime and ash out behind his lost supplies. The castle left a trail like a snail in the heather, but it was an easy way to get rid of the slime. There were some advantages to living in a moving castle, Bitty thought as he washed the floor, wondering if Kent’s noises had been coming from the castle, too. If so, he could only imagine the panic that had struck up in Market Chipping.

By this time, Bitty was tired and cross. He knew the green slime was Kent’s revenge on him and he was not at all ready to be sympathetic when Chowder finally led Kent forth from the bathroom and sat him tenderly in the chair by the hearth.

“That was the shittiest idea you’ve had yet!” Jack sputtered, “Were you trying to kill us both?”

Kent took no notice. He just sat, looking tragic and shivering.

“I can’t get him to speak, Bitty!” Chowder spoke his concern.

“It’s just a tantrum,” Bitty replied with a harrumph. Caitlin and Lardo were good at tantrums in their own way, too, so Bitty knew how to deal with those.

On the other hand, it probably wasn’t the best idea to spank a wizard for getting hysterical about his eyes.

Either way, Bitty’s experience told him that tantrums were seldom about the thing they appear to be about so he made Jack move over so that he could balance a pan of milk on the logs. When it was warm, he thrust a mugful into Kent’s hands. “Drink it,” he ordered.

Kent immediately took a doleful sip.

“Now, what was all this fuss about? Is it the young lady you keep going to see?”

“Yes,” Kent moaned, “I left her alone to see if that would make her miss me but she didn’t. She wasn’t even sure before and now there’s some other guy…”

He sounded so miserable, Bitty almost felt sorry for him. Now that he was a bit more put together, he noticed his eyes really were a thick, muddy brown—the color even appearing to bleed into the whites of his eye.

“She’s the most beautiful girl there ever was in these parts,” Kent continued mournfully. “I love her, but she just ignores me and is running off to someone else. How can she do that after all the attention I’ve given her? They usually get rid of the others as soon as I come along.”

Any signs of sympathy immediately vanished. It occurred to him that if Kent could cover himself with green slime so easily he could just as easily turn his eyes their proper color. “Then give her a love potion and be done with it,” Bitty snapped.

“Oh, no,” said Kent, “That’s not playing fair. It’d spoil all the fun.”

“A game?” Bitty asked in disbelief, “Don’t you ever think about the poor girl whose heart you’re about to break?”

Kent finished the milk and gazed into the mug with a soft smile. “I think of her all the time,” he sighed, “Lardo.”

Bitty’s sympathy went for good with a sharp bang and a good deal of anxiety flooded into its place. _Oh Caitlin!_ he moaned to himself, _you have been busy! So it wasn’t anyone in Annie’s you were talking about._


End file.
